Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Pennsylvania Marcellus News Roundup, June 13-20.

United Methodists representing 950 churches across Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania passed a resolution calling for a temporary halt in gas well drilling in the Marcellus shale as well as an impact tax on those places where drilling already has taken hold.

State Rep. Marguerite Quinn said she is all for the jobs the burgeoning Marcellus Shale natural gas industry is growing in Pennsylvania, and is not seeking to “stifle” that success.

But before the 143rd District Republican looks to the future, she winces at the “past lessons we have learned through the coal industry.” She points to the environmental nightmares, health problems and infrastructure challenges coal’s legacy left the commonwealth.

Six in 10 Pennsylvania residents support natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and an equal number support a tax on the companies drilling there, according to a poll on Pennsylvania politics released Tuesday.

A new website aimed at organizing the avalanche of information on all things Marcellus Shale was announced today by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC). “MarcellusFacts” (www.marcellusfacts.org), scours the internet continuously for news and information on Marcellus Shale and aggregates it into an easy-to-read format. Material is gathered from such sources as Google News, RSS feeds and audited news sites, and organized into a clear and concise format for computers or smartphones.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, now a consultant to the natural gas industry, said Thursday that drillers operating in the Marcellus Shale recognize they need to improve their image if they want to be "warmly embraced" by the public, not just "grudgingly accepted."

State environmental officials are investigating new instances of methane contaminating private residential water wells and bubbling up in a northern Pennsylvania stream near a Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling operation.

A short discussion, a unanimous vote and the deed was done — the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee sent to the floor of the Legislature a bill to extract tens of millions of dollars annually from natural gas drilling on the rich Marcellus Shale formation,

Pennsylvania environmental officials are investigating new instances of methane in seven water wells in an area where Fort Worth-based XTO Energy is drilling natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale play.